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With the VCore bump to 1.400V, the power-consumption goes sky-high. While AMD makes some ground with idle-power, the power-consumption with Cinebench and full load beats even Intels i7.
Conclusion:
With the new 965 Black Edition, AMD wants to close the gap on Intel. While the performance is ok as expected, the power consumption is off the charts. For some reason AMD decided to bump the VCore 1.4000V which, in our opinion, is an unnecessary precaution to make sure any 965 Black Edition is capable to reach the speed. We could manage with 1.2500VCore and we think a moderate VCore of 1.3250V would have been enough.
The new CPU is available for about €205. The former top product the 955 Black Edition is much cheaper for about €156. As we have proved in our 955 Black Edition article, the former CPU can reach 3.40GHz easily. We are not impressed with the new AMD offering, it gets too hot for our taste, 200MHz increase cost you 25% more compared to the 955 BE. So, for the time being we recommend you stick with the 955 Black Edition.